What are people's views on vampires?

I personally believe that, while people seem to be doing very little with them at the moment besides turning them into perfectly pretty gothic blood suckers who fall madly for the pretty girl and drag her off in a creepy fashion that somehow becomes sickeningly romantic in the author's mind, good things can be done with vampires.

Vampires are very interesting, and there are many aspects of vampire lore that are often left unexplored or brushed aside. Take, for example, the typical vampire weaknesses (sunlight, holy water, etc.): in many stories they are simply taken for granted; since Twilight came out, it has become cool to simply ignore them in favor of an invincible character. If someone wrote a story that explained these weaknesses in an unusual, interesting, and new manner, however, that could make a very good story. I would read it. I also like the idea of the vampire as a monster, rather than a Twilight-fluff thing that prances around talking of love and honor. It would seem that there is very little you can do with a monstrous vampire that does not bring Dracula to mind, but I believe that it can be done. If you give a vampire a concious will and a moral code where the number one rule is "protect oneself," then you can do just as much with vampires as you can with humans, while still keeping the vampire delightfully monstrous.

I do think that vampire romance is ridiculous, especially with humans. I can see vampire romance occuring between two vampires, but with a human it's not only improbably, it's really creepy. A lot of vampire romance authors seem to wish they could place themselves in the heroines shoes, which disturbs me on many levels. I don't really find the idea of a guy sucking my blood all that sweet. And vampires, the way I see them, ought to view humans as food, so a vampire human romance would be like a human falling in love with a cow. Creepy. A predator might lead his prey into a beautiful garden, but in the end the prey still gets betrayed and eaten.

So, any other viewpoints?

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